Reducing anxiety attacks can be expensive, here are 28 natural ways to help reduce your anxiety attacks right now.

You need to understand what anxiety is before you undergo any anxiety treatment for attacks, either self-treatment with the list below or by a professional. This is not providing any medical advice just practical ways to reduce anxiety in your daily life.

If you have trouble reducing anxiety attacks, you may find our article on 24 ways to manage stress may be helpful.

Anxiety is a state of apprehension, uncertainty, and fear, it is having an anticipation of realistic or made up life-threatening situation impairing the body physically or psychologically. Anxiety attacks can often be uncontrollable if you do not have the right tools to manage it.

Anxiety attacks occur when we think or act in an anticipation of the future of events or situations that may never occur. Anxiety in the mind is a state of uneasiness that comes from worrying, anxiety is not a physical thing in our brain or something we can touch but thoughts of worrying about a dangerous or uneasy situation.

Take the Quiz: Do I Have Anxiety?

Anxiety attacks result from a certain style of behavior NOT caused by a biological, chemical, or genetic problem with the brain.

If you have been diagnosed with an anxiety disorder this just means you have anxious behaviors, it does not mean you are somehow mentally unstable or deficient, and it doesn’t mean that you have something medically, biologically, chemically, or genetically wrong with you.

Before getting anxiety treatment for attacks, you need to look at symptoms you are experiencing.

Common anxiety signs and symptoms include:

Feeling nervous, restless or tense
Having a sense of impending danger, panic or doom
Having an increased heart rate
Breathing rapidly (hyperventilation)
Sweating
Trembling
Feeling weak or tired
Trouble concentrating or thinking about anything other than the present worry
Having trouble sleeping
Experiencing gastrointestinal (GI) problems
Having difficulty controlling worry
Having the urge to avoid things that trigger anxiety

When it’s time to see a doctor:

When you are worrying too much and it’s interfering with your work, relationships or other parts of your life.

Your fear, worry or anxiety is making you upset and it is difficult to control.

You feel depressed, you are using alcohol or drug use to help your anxiety, or have other mental health concerns.

When you believe your anxiety could be linked to a physical health problem.

Having suicidal thoughts or behaviors — seek emergency treatment immediately. Do not be afraid to reach out, people want to help you. Get the problem while it is fresh, do not let it get so bad that it is overwhelming you.

Everyone feels anxious now and then and it is a normal emotion. You may feel nervous when faced with a problem at work, before taking a test, or before making an important decision. These are all perfectly normal examples of anxiety, this does not mean you have something wrong with you, this is normal. 

Anxiety disorders are different, they keep you from carrying on with your life normally. When a mental illness or sickness interrupts your life you should always seek a medical professional for help.

1. Write down facts.

You want to get out of your own head. Anxiety treatment encourages you to get your thoughts and emotions out on paper. Write down everything you are thinking right now until your hand hurts. Then take a break, go get a snack and some water and come back. Read what you wrote and examine every statement. What did you say that is true? What did you say that is just speculation. Writing your thoughts down is therapeutic, but analyzing thoughts that may be false can help you take away some of your anxieties.

2. Do something.

Anxious thoughts come when we have a negative thought or reaction and then we ‘feed the monster’. When getting anxiety treatment feeding the monster means giving time for false or negative thoughts to grow inside your mind. The next time you are anxious or have a negative thought, go do something physical in front of you. Go pull a couple weeds in the yard, or take up the hobby of knitting. Anything that will help you take your mind of the negativity will help.